Four steps to excellent customer experience in the travel industry

Investing in customer experience pays off. That’s the overwhelming conclusion drawn by Forrester’s 2016 Customer Experience Index, which found that CX leaders grow faster, make more money and attract more customers than CX laggards. Consumer preference for positive experiences is also reflected in purchase trends; more people are drawn towards spending money on holidays than they are on physical product, with experience-driven purchases only set to increase in the coming years.

Which is good news for Travel Agents. After years of losing ground to aggregators like Expedia, and DIY holiday apps including Hopper and AirBnb, Travel Agents are once again starting to feel the warm glow of growth as a result of the increased consumer hunger for an excellent customer experience. And that’s largely because of their offline reputation; people know that Travel Agents will work hard to find them the perfect holiday with minimal stress or pressure placed on the consumer.

Travel Agents aren’t using their data for growth

But this growth is being threatened by a chronic lack of appropriate digital development. Our latest report, ‘Using data to develop a concierge mindset in the travel industry’ reveals that Travel Agents’ websites are failing to offer the personalized service that their consumers expect. The research looks at how 31 leading European Travel Agents offer contact channels on their websites, finding that the majority simply aren’t using their online data to better the customer experience.

With consumers’ online journeys often being discounted, and Travel Agents ignoring the vast majority of people on their website that are not looking to make an immediate purchase, it’s clear that more needs to be done to improve the online customer experience.

Four steps to CX success

But being tasked with the aim of ‘improving the online customer experience’ is a broad, vague and wide-reaching ask. So we thought that we’d help out by creating an easy-to-follow four step guide that should help you to manage your focus. Print it out, follow the steps and reap the benefits of delivering a superior, data-driven, customer experience.